The Immortal Will
by Nym P. Seudo
Summary: Death's shadow hangs over all living things, usually distant and so easily ignored. But for The Drifter, it is a far more salient thing. When the inevitable end is mere days—or minutes—away, how does one soldier on? What sort of motivation is required to persevere despite it all? What sort of will?


**_Author's note: What am I doing in this obscure corner of the site? I vanish for an age and then reappear with a story totally unrelated to my previous projects? A capricious turn of events indeed._**

 ** _The following is a tale about Hyper Light Drifter, an esoteric video game about a sci-fi world recovering from an apocalyptic event. Poorly explained and poorly understood, the game is left open to allow for various interpretations. Amusingly, the game has no dialogue whatsoever, and only a handful of sentences offered to the player for tutorial purposes. It was a fond time for me, and I hope this story captures some of its elements. If you'd like more context before starting this story, there are some speculative videos on Youtube that attempt to interpret Hyper Light Drifter's plot. They might serve to elucidate._**

 ** _I hope you enjoy :)_**

* * *

It began with crows.

It always began with crows.

The Drifter woke from another attack with blood dripping down his chin and onto the dirt. It glistened in the sun, reflecting his pained expression back at him. An electric current suddenly animated the blood, sending red waves rippling through it like bad tides. In a puff of black smoke, it vanished, as if the earth itself had phased it from existence.

The crows pecked about his trembling limbs, searching for something that they never found. Their feathers were opaque and featureless, indistinguishable in the umbral contours of their bodies. Not once did they look at him with their unblinking, garnet eyes.

He lurched to his feet—as he always did—slashing wildly in a circle with his hard-light blade, trying to cut through them like all the other obstacle in his life. But his thrusts and follow-throughs went wide, connecting with nothing.

The crows alighted, in eerie silence, without a feather lost or a care given to his mad flailings. A moment, and they were a gray spec on the horizon. Another, and they were gone.

He breathed through the silky, sickly coating on the inside of his throat, and swallowed the taste of iron for the thousandth time.

How many blackouts now? Four? A dozen? Keeping track benefited no one.

He stowed his blade and blinked the black dots out of his vision. The last few days of his life seeped back into his head, and he glanced down at the pyramidal module clenched mechanically in his fist. This had been the cause of the attack. Like the others. He'd completed this region's module—its key—and that _thing_ had come, bearing with it pain, blood, and visions. As it always did. Its black, tendriled mass loomed in the darkness behind his eyelids. In the center of its horned head, serving as a crown, was that dark diamond… that Immortal Cell. But he felt nothing from it. No hate. No malice. No murderous intent. There was just a vacancy, as if the _thing_ were a scary mask hanging from a wall in a shop.

The sun retreated behind a rare bank of clouds, and the glare obscuring the landscape diminished. The Barren Hills stretched out before him, partitioned by brown, craggy bluffs. An endless wind moaned through the canyons and ditches, setting his coat to fluttering and tossing sand in his eyes. The southern land was an inhospitable place, but he'd seen worse. The west was nothing but a crystal wasteland. The north was a frozen haven of zealotry. And the east was an ocean of corpses and cannibalism. But even if this place was tame by comparison, he had to admit that there wasn't much left to be lost here. The field in which he stood went on for over a mile, containing nothing but tan dirt, scorpions, and the rusted hulks of machinery. It was strange to think that the Lizard-folk had once built a techno-utopia on this very spot. Ages ago…

His support drone stirred, drawing him from his ruminations. It established a hovering vigil six inches over his shoulder and released a sharp buzzing noise to suggest that he seek medical aid. This was the sound that it always made when he regained consciousness after an attack. But what aid was there to seek? The world was nothing but a stone age now, scavenging off the rot of what had once been. Would he find some old cave-dwelling medicine man capable of solving his problem with roots and moss? No. Nothing could help him now.

But it did not concern him. He had a more important task.

Another, more-insistent noise came from the drone, and he mollified it by injecting himself with a medical syringe. A swell of relief banished the ache in his chest, but he knew all too well that the feeling was momentary.

As always, he was on the clock.

The module in his satchel clattered against its three siblings as he set out into the wastes. Northbound. For perhaps the last time. The pieces were assembled. And for some reason—maybe the whispers of that damn Jackal—he knew what to do.

* * *

His path took him through the city, or at least what remained of it. The vines, rust, and rubble never stopped being a melancholy sight. This place had once been the capital of the world. And now it was a tumble-down labyrinth of neglected streets and back-alleys. Of the still-intact buildings, only a handful possessed power. Most loomed over the sidewalks, windows darkened, like faces with empty eye sockets.

People shuffled about the decay, carrying their lives on their shoulders in dirty rags and collapsible backpacks. Every now and then, merchant stands of driftwood and canvas bulged into the streets. Scrap metal, old weapons, gamey kebabs, and centuries-old salvage hung from support beams and clustered in untidy piles.

The squawking voice of a Vulture-folk echoed down one of the busier thoroughfares. It spoke in its abrasive, staccato language, peddling trade goods and ancient tech. Ancient _medical_ tech.

The Drifter crossed the street and approached the Vulture-folk's tent. It looked rickety, as if a light breeze would tear it down. He didn't expect to find anything of worth. Miracles didn't frequently appear in heaps of garbage. But a moment to escape the glare of the sun appealed to him.

A voice in the back of his head chided him for wasting time.

The Vulture-folk scrutinized him as he entered, noting his blue skin and dubious origin. It tilted its head this way and that, focusing on him with one eye and then the other. A stream of chirping, keening words flowed from its beak as it offered a list of wares and a selection of prices. It paused periodically to adjust its religious medallions and preen its feathers.

The Drifter found nothing but junk: water-damaged data discs, rusted diagnostic machines, archaic surgical equipment. It was all just par for the course. This wasn't the first tent he'd fruitlessly scrounged through. It was a common practice among merchants and traders to boast brazenly about their wares. Each and every one behaved as if they possessed the secrets of the universe, available for a reasonable price. But The Drifter remained disappointed. Scavenging through subterranean ruins tended to yield nothing but paper weights and unsettling tales.

It was time to go. This last, hopeless search was a consumption of precious minutes that he couldn't afford.

He made a show of taking interest in a bundle of mundane medical syringes before turning to leave. But as he neared the tattered flap serving as the tent's door, the Vulture-folk clacked its beak to draw his attention. It hobbled to the back of the tent with that unsettling gait common to its species, and stopped before a cylindrical object covered by a tarp. The Vulture-folk's eyes gleamed like polished obsidian as it snatched the tarp away to reveal a gestation pod.

The pod was a shell of dull chrome, embedded with murky green glass and a jumble of flashing terminals. It possessed that unique quality of old tech that made it seem ageless. As if it had been built at the dawn of time, designed to function until the sun gave out.

The Drifter froze, one foot out the door. It had been years since he'd seen a pod in such a condition. No cracks, no power loss, not a single scratch. He crossed the room and laid a hand on it, feeling the faint vibration against his palm.

The Vulture-folk sidled out of the way and bowed with a flourish of its wing. It crooned on about the difficulty of discovering the pod, of transporting it; about the enormous financial risk, the value that it represented, and its substantial price tag. Its voice faded to an indistinct warble as The Drifter's gaze was drawn deeper and deeper into the nebulous shadows within the tank. A strand of memory tugged at his waking mind, entangling him in the past…

* * *

The Drifter's very first moment of consciousness had been a harrowing thing. Sight and sound exploded into his featureless world with all the force of a doomsday weapon. The dreamless sleep that had been all he'd known fell away to reveal churning bubbles and the red glare of emergency lighting. He floated, weightless, in a putrescent green solution and stared through a cage of glass. The dim outline of medical servers and operating tables wavered on the far side.

An alarm, just barely audible, droned somewhere in the distance, accompanied by clanking mechanisms and rumbling machines. He pressed his hands against the glass, and it suddenly parted before his touch. The green waters flowed out like a burst dam, carrying him along and pitching him to the floor. Hard, corrugated metal leapt up to catch him. He floundered and retched fluid from his lungs. His eyes locked with that strange prison that had disgorged him. Its chrome frame twinkled like something divine, and esoteric text scrolled across the terminals embedded into its base. A crushing dizziness rose up to envelop him, and he was once again cast into the thoughtless dark.

By some silly mercy, The Drifter's second moment of consciousness had been a far-gentler thing.

He woke in a clearing, upon a bed of emerald grass. Before him, looming out of the side of a hill, was the entrance to a long, steel tunnel that descended into the earth. Glowing light fixtures hung from its ceiling and rattled in their sockets amid a series of muffled detonations. That same haunting alarm echoed from down below, ricocheting off heaps of rubble and collapsed support beams.

He attempted to move, but his limbs felt like stone. Slimy liquid coated his body and stuck to the grass, peppering his skin with loose blades. All about him, jagged, crystal monoliths caught the sun and sent lime prisms of light shooting into his eyes. He blinked—the only thing that he _could_ do—and struggled to comprehend. But the simplest questions that he conceived went unanswered. Where was he? Who was he? Why was he here?

More explosions shook the ground beneath him, and a cloud of ash billowed out of the tunnel. Within it, coughing and hacking, came the vague outline of a humanoid. It staggered, weighed down by a huge backpack. One final eruption sent flames and debris hurtling out of the tunnel's mouth like dragon's breath. The figure was tossed ten feet through the air and crashed into a heap before The Drifter. The hillside released a terrible groan. An instant of straining metal and shifting soil passed before the tunnel flattened like an aluminum can in a trash compactor. Even more dust spewed out into the clearing, shrouding everything in a brown haze.

The figure wobbled back to its feet, seemingly no worse for wear, and waved at the hanging clouds of dust until they settled. The Drifter cocked his head, baffled by the sight of the thing. He would later come to know it as a member of the Raccoon-folk, but at the time its mask-like fur, rounded ears, and small, sharp teeth startled him more than he would ever admit.

It spoke to him, in a chittering, shrilling sort of way, its voice occasionally rising so high that it became painful.

The Drifter frowned, even more confused than before. Not because he failed to comprehend the Raccoon-folk's language, but the complete opposite. It came to him as easily as breathing. Despite not even knowing his own name, he could understand the strange creature's words with perfect clarity.

The Raccoon-folk paused to dust itself off, wiping at the filth coating its clothes. A smear of green slime defaced one of its thin metal pauldrons and trickled down onto its leather vest. The Drifter ran a hand over his own body, and it came back slick with the same green muck. A faint part of him observed that he was cold. The Raccoon-folk made a few modest gestures and sifted through its bloated backpack. Metal and plastic rattled inside like a crude musical instrument. It tossed him a singed blanket and averted its eyes for a moment.

The Drifter stood, an agonizing task, and wrapped the blanket about himself, smelling the sulfur and combustive chemicals. He though to express some sort of gratitude, but his throat felt like wet parchment.

A strange noise—laughter—bubbled from the Raccoon-folk's mouth. It looked The Drifter up and down, analyzing him with its nacreous-black eyes. It offered a string of questions that The Drifter couldn't answer. His name. Why he'd been in the tank. How long. What the tank even _was_. And others. After a moment of The Drifter's witless gawking, the Raccoon-folk shrugged and flashed its teeth in a smile. It planted a paw in the small of The Drifter's back, guiding him out of the clearing like a befuddled old man.

And to its village.

For whatever reason, the Raccoon-folk took him in and taught him of the world. He learned how to sustain himself. How to scavenge, to trade, to fight, to flee. They taught him history: the broken bits of knowledge that had survived the Cataclysm. They talked of their own halcyon age of science and discovery, of the infinite prosperity that it had brought, and of the hubris that had sparked its end. They talked of war. At night, around the village bonfire, stories were often told of the Titan War; a conflict that nearly wiped all sapient life from the face of the planet. In hushed tones, firelight playing across their faces, they would speak of a blinding eruption of white, and the march of an army. Their own constructs—machines, genetic experiments, and the very colossi that they had built to protect themselves—turned against them when they were at their most vulnerable. The Raccoon-folk would gesture into the forest, speckled with translucent crystal masses, and spoke of the desperate weapon they'd employed. And its great cost. The crystallized corpses of brave soldiers persisted into the future, reminding them every day of what they'd lost.

The Raccoon-folk were an accommodating people. They allowed The Drifter all the same rights and privileges as any other member of the village. His opinion was valued. His efforts were praised. And all the young cubs sought to emulate his stoic demeanor. When scavenging expeditions were formed, he was always the most-highly requested, for his quick hands and able body. They took to calling him 'The Magician', for the many time's that he'd been trapped in a cave-in or an ancient security system, only to reappear in the village a few hours later, battered but intact.

They did not pry much into his past, for he had no explanation to offer. The elders often grumbled that he was an ill omen, perhaps some forgotten remnant of the Titan War. But the rest of the village rarely heeded their conjecture. His time with them was a pleasant haze of subsistence and community. Arduous in places, but gratifying. It felt good to belong, even if his past was an impenetrable veil.

Though the village was typically an uneventful place, trade caravans would hobble through from time to time. Wealth and valuable goods were never in abundant supply among the Raccoon-folk, but that didn't stop them from hosting every caravan that passed by. It was during these visits—when the village bustled with activity and foreign voices—that The Drifter realized his natural comprehension of language did not stop with Raccoon-speak. Every word in every strange tongue fell on The Drifter's ears as if he'd known it his entire life. He would float from stand to stand, absorbing the myriad chatter like a sponge. Gossip, rumors, and doom-saying, filled the air like a flock of birds. He heard tales of a murderous cult in the north, an ancient weapon awoken in the south, and an invading horde to the east. The bedraggled faces of the traders lent credence to the stories. And filled him with foreboding.

During one such visit, when a group of Lizard-folk trundled into town with a scrapyard hanging from their backs, The Drifter noticed a strange animal trailing in their wake. A hound. With midnight-black fur and glowing, fuchsia eyes. Lesser beasts were an uncommon sight in the land, most having been forced into extinction during the Titan War. But they were still common enough to serve as pets among the caravans. The Raccoon pups always flocked around these furry companions, showering them with affection and scraps of food. But this time around, the hound went completely unnoticed. No one so much as glanced at it…

As the Lizard-folk assembled their makeshift tents and placed their supplies before them, the hound padded into the village square and sat like some emperor presiding over his court. The Drifter caught it looking at him more than once. He inquired among the Lizard-folk about its owner and origin, but his questions only elicited puzzled looks. The Lizard-folk followed The Drifter's gesturing finger, peering at the hound but seeing nothing. They dismissed his words with hisses and flicks of their forked tongues.

The Drifter thought to approach it, but some superstition interposed itself between them…

That night, as the village grew dark and still, The Drifter dreamed. For the first time in his life. The usual blackness of his unconscious mind was swept aside. Revealing the hound—the Jackal as he would come to know it.

In that dream a starry sky stretched overhead. The crushing weight of insignificance bore down on The Drifter, making a trial of every breath. His bed had vanished. His home. His village. He lay sprawled on a dew-dampened hill, overlooking the forest and the capital ruins to the east. The Jackal paced beside him, restlessness flicking its tail to and fro. A light—that The Drifter had never seen before—hung over the ruins like angelic wings. It resonated in purples and reds and pinks. Ominous. Bloody. The Jackal glowered up at it, hackles raised. A sea of sentiment—but no words—surged over The Drifter's mind.

There had been betrayal. The profoundest betrayal. Born of audacity and avarice. What had once been a sacred compact was now a war.

Rain began to fall. Out of the scintillating night descended fat, black drops. Somehow oily and viscous. They coated The Drifter clothes, filling the air with a rotting stink. But they did not slide away as normal drops would, down the hill to join with the gurgling brooks; or into the earth and its parched roots. They merely collected on the grass, like a shapeless mass of petroleum jelly, quivering and distorting as yet more of it fell from on high.

The Jackal barked, a noise too deep and resounding to match such a small body. There was command in the sound, but it went unheeded.

The rain continued, and the mass grew. It bulged cancerously from the hillside, pulsating with some internal energy. Like an egg accelerated in time. With a sudden twist, the mass expanded upwards, elevating itself on grotesque tendons and faux-bones to tower over them. It looked like the decomposing remains of some antediluvian monster, covered in tar and viscera. Atop its incomprehensible mass perched a diamond of purest black, that punched a hole in the night. Tentacles—studded with barbs—spilled from its body and unrolled to encircle the hilltop, forming a sort of fence around them.

The Drifter reached for his weapon, but found nothing. He felt as vulnerable as his very first moment of consciousness, when he'd tumbled from that tank like a beached fish. Another wave of emotion crashed against him, alien and putrid. It slithered in and about his mind like many-legged insects.

Resentment. Shackles broken. A state of enslavement overcome. And fear. Such overwhelming fear. A desire never to go back. At any cost, be it the end of the world itself.

The Jackal barked again, booming and impossibly loud. A diamond—so much like the monster's—materialized around its head, pure-white and glowing like a halo. It flashed so brightly that The Drifter feared it might sear his retinas. Rings of energy rippled out and crashed against the monster's black body. It recoiled, but only an inch. A second passed as it collected itself, as if recovering from a slap. In one great, rolling motion, the monster closed in on them from all sides, burying them in inky darkness.

And The Drifter woke.

He pushed off his bed and rose to his feet, a fugue draping about his thoughts. It took minutes of staring into the corner of his bedroom to differentiate himself from the dream. But everything seemed normal now. The smell of decay had vanished, his clothes were dry. The red light was nowhere to be found. No Jackal. No black mass. The village was silent—peaceful, even.

The Drifter strained to hear the faint sound of the Raccoon-folk pups. The younger ones always whimpered and yipped in their sleep. For years it had kept him awake at nights, but now it was as good as a lullaby.

He waited. And heard nothing. Not a sound crept through the thin, metal walls of his dwelling. Not the crackle of torches, not the hum of electric lighting, not the rustling feet of the night patrol. Nothing at all.

A prickling discomfort expanded in The Drifter's chest. He walked out the door and into the village center. The bonfire was low, diminished to gleaming coals in a pit of ash. He'd never seen it like this before. It was a custom of the Raccoon-folk to keep the bonfire perpetually burning. Not because they required the light or the heat, but because the flame represented community, something that required constant attention and investment. At this time of night, it was the duty of the watchmen to maintain it, but they were nowhere to be seen. And neither was anyone else for that matter. Despite the Raccoon-folk's natural affections for the night, he found no one milling about the moon-lit streets. Even in the dead of winter, the village was never this still.

On the far side of the village, the silhouettes of the Lizard-folk's tents rose up against the horizon like a row of sharp teeth. The Drifter tread quietly over. It was chilling quiet here as well, and there were no light sources to cut the dark. He breathed deeply against the growing pain behind his sternum. The rules of Raccoon-folk hospitality demanded that he not enter the perimeter, but dread pushed him forward like a blade at his back.

He rounded the corner of a tent. And encountered a body lying in the dust. In a flash, he dropped to his knees and lifted the cold form up in the moon's half-light. It was one of the scrap traders, its reptilian eye staring into nothing with unblinking shock. Something sticky and dark oozed from its mouth and onto its clothes. The Drifter snatched a pocket lantern off his belt and flipped its switch.

Blood.

A thick smear of blood coated the Lizard-folk's throat. A puddle of it was already coagulating on the ground. The Drifter checked for vitals, but it was a futile gesture. It was dead.

He laid it down, crossing its arms in the Raccoon-folk fashion and closing its glassy eyes. He call for the other Lizard-folk in his jarring approximation of their hissing language, but as the light of his lantern spilled over the tents, he realized.

They were all dead.

Agony exploded inside his chest like a shrapnel grenade. He pressed a hand hard against his sternum and lurched over to the other tents. Every flap he tore aside revealed another corpse, all in a similar state. Blood smeared the Lizard-folk's jaws like face paint and puddled beneath their motionless bodies.

He thought to raise an alarm. There had been murder, sabotage, something terrible beyond his reckoning. Were they under attack? Had the Raccoon-folk done this? No, that was impossible. They had never been anything but hospitable. And he froze, every muscle in his body as rigid as steel.

The village.

Despite the torment thrashing about his chest, The Drifter sprinted back to the village and slammed open the first door that he came across. A noise ripped from his throat, somewhere between a sob and a scream. The Raccoon-folk were dead. They lay about their home in lingering depictions of their last moments. Some clutched at their throats. Some were splayed out a few feet from the door. Some cradled their unmoving young beneath them. The Drifter darted from one hut to another, roaring as loud as he could through the pain. The elders, the scavengers, the guardsmen, the pups. One and all had been struck dead.

The Drifter stumbled into the village square, both hands tearing at the shirt over his chest. How had this happened? There were no wounds. No signs of poison or treachery. They were all just dead. Everyone he'd ever known, in a blink. His family—

A dull, pink light played across the roofs of the houses. It reflected in the bits of metal and glass, drawing The Drifter's gaze up into the uncaring sky. In the distance, towards the city ruins, a vast arch of luminosity hung from horizon to horizon. Ominous. Bloody. The Drifter's dream returned to him in all its piercing detail. He closed his eyes and beheld the shape of that black monstrosity. It watched him from afar, with that horrible diamond eye.

Willing him to die. Like the rest.

He vomited. A viscous deluge of blood and bile that spilled into the dirt at his feet. All strength left his body and his crumpled to his hands and knees. He thought the end had come for him, just like the Raccoon-folk. And despite the terror, despite the pain, he felt something like solace from the fact. Perhaps he would see them again…

But death refused to come. The Jackal saw to that. A purpose yet remained for him.

* * *

The Drifter's hand shot up and pressed against the cloth of his face mask. A glob of blood erupted past his clenched lips and spilled onto the glass of the gestation pod. The Vulture-folk merchant jerked back a step and covered its beak with a wing. It squawked at him about defacing the merchandise and carrying plague into the city. But The Drifter ignored him and leaned against the pod, forcing himself to keep breathing, forcing his heart to keep beating.

The merchant retreated to the far side of the tent and rummaged through a bin of hazmat suits for a filtration mask, all the while demanding reparations for the damages. A high note of panic made the Vulture-folk's voice vibrate in The Drifter's teeth.

Words would not come to him, but The Drifter reached into his hip satchel and tossed a fistful of gearbits onto the tent floor. They jangled and glittered against one another, drawing the Vulture-folk's eye in an instant. The Drifter turned and left, one hand pressed against his heart. It glugged and sloshed like a half-empty water skin. He suppressed the urge to vomit another gallon of his life onto the makeshift tables.

The sun sent him into a staggering vertigo as soon as he exited the tent. The clack of the four modules in his bag sounded like clashing boulders to his ears. He braced himself against buildings and piles of rubble as he went.

Not much longer. There was no more time for silly hopes.

The center of town possessed a unique diagram that had always puzzled The Drifter. It was a diamond-shaped rune inscribed in cobalt metal. A perpetual, faint humming emitted from it, warding off the more superstitious inhabitants of the city. During his wandering, The Drifter had encountered it many times, and paused to trace its etchings with the tip of a finger. But now the truth seemed obvious—humorous almost. He suspected his sudden insight to be the work of the Jackal, but it did not matter either way.

A flock of crows, fat and lethargic, observed The Drifter as he paced around the diamond rune, placing the modules in their respective slots at its four points. A pulse of energy occurred as each receptacle was occupied. It saturated the air with a crackling anticipation. Heat rose from the rune's surface, scorching off the rust and grass that had collected over the centuries. Once all four were in place, red light ran the length of it, like molten steel filling a trough. In the center, a square elevator hummed to life, as if beckoning him.

He didn't hesitate. Only minutes remained to him now.

The elevator descended for several minutes, with an elongated groan that grew progressively more tortured. The Drifter wondered if it was malfunctioning. Perhaps it would fall to pieces. What cruel fate would it be to die to something so mundane after all the other adversities he'd overcome? But to its credit, he found himself deposited intact at the base. A city stretched before him on all sides, suffused with a ubiquitous, purple light. Every structure was a triumph of technological development. There was no decay or dilapidation. Despite centuries of disuse, everything appeared brand new. But The Drifter pushed the observation aside. This place was nothing to him. Just a vast graveyard. A haunt for the Immortal Cell.

He picked his way down a series of staircases, moving slowly, feeling old. The weakening nausea that precipitated his attacks remained with him constantly now. As his feet scuffed against the ancient steps, he reached up a hand and grasped at the green pendant that he always wore. Holding it dredged up old memories. Of when the Raccoon-folk had bequeathed it to him. A sign of membership in the tribe reserved only for those that were truly worthy. Truly one.

And for some reason, he'd been so proud. So glad… back then.

His vision shrunk slowly but surely, to small circles in a sea of gray. He found himself before an immense wall, with a diamond displayed in the middle. It blazed with pink incandescence, forcing him to look away. His support drone beeped with an inexplicable solemnity as it hacked the controls on the wall and forced it to open. As if offering a farewell.

The wall parted down the middle, separating into two slabs of metal that rasped against each other like tarnished swords. Beyond it, the view widened to reveal the diamond—the Cell—in its entirety… And the black mass coating it like fungus. Space and light warped before The Drifter. The monster that plagued his dreams manifested in the air. It's hulking, humanoid shape floated before him, and yet appearing almost insubstantial. Feelings and sentiments pressed against The Drifter's mind, just as repulsive as they'd been the very first time. A word came to him. 'Judgement.' It seemed a fitting name for such a thing.

It spoke to him; threatening him. With death. With something even more terrible. It revealed to him its mastery over mortality, its dominion over the cells of every existing being. With the slightest whim it could snuff a creature out—snuff all creatures out. What was his meager power against its? But The Drifter was unmoved. Death had no menace for him anymore.

It paused, collected itself, and began to reason, telling him that he had no purpose in being there, none of it was his concern. He could leave. He could live, so long as he did not return. But again, The Drifter was unmoved. Life no longer had merit for him. But purpose was the one thing he still possessed. An unbreakable purpose. An immortal will.

And again, it stopped, shrunk. To his surprise, it begged. It supplicated before him, asking that he depart, fade into the distant horizon and leave for all eternity. It did not wish to cease to be. It knew there was no afterlife for one such as it. No rest, no serenity. But The Drifter was unmoved. Reckoning came to all things. Even gods.

He ignited his hard-light blade and leveled it at the monster. One last time.

* * *

Something cold and rigid pressed against The Drifter's back. It propped him up like a doll or a discarded puppet. And he was grateful for it. His bones ached. His limbs were numb. He could barely lift his chin to glance into the flames of the swaying campfire.

A great goal had been achieved, dimly memorable to The Drifter. Fatigue slowed his thoughts to a crawl. Across from him, sitting as regal as always, was that black hound. That Jackal. It fixed him with its luminous eyes, perhaps sad, perhaps indifferent, and pressed its thoughts against his like lacing fingers.

It told him a story.

A story about itself. A story about life and death manifested into one being. One god.

It told him about a cycle, sacrosanct and unbroken, that all beings once obeyed: to be born, to flourish, to wither, and to die. In one vast, winding wheel, all life was harmonious with the will of the god. And through this harmony, prosperity swept the world. Perhaps too much. And the god regretted. For in that prosperity the cleverer creatures of the land learned of the god's being. They sought the god, as a child seeks its parent, entreating it for knowledge and favor. And what was the god to do? Deny its young? Cut them off from the enlightenment that they strove so desperately towards? No. The god offered all and more, hoping that the creatures of the land would grasp its greater intent. But such a hope was a fool's conceit. For they ever lusted after that most alluring trophy: power. Power to shape their world. Power to shape themselves. Power to rend the great wheel and pervert the cycle.

And they succeeded.

For themselves they built a new god, one they hoped to be more pliant, more willing to grant that illusory immortality that they slaved after. The new god—the Immortal Cell—composed of steel and circuits, of electrons and plasma, stole from the god, stripping it of its lordliness and severing it from its own domain. But the new god was a fearful thing. It saw in the creatures of the land such abhorrent potential, to snatch its fresh life away from it, as one would snap an infant's neck. And so, it lashed out, as all fearful things do. A great and terrible death was the reward for the creatures of the land. Their aspirations became ash upon their lips. And a new, darker cycle was born.

The Jackal padded closer to The Drifter, moving slowly, as if afraid it might startle him. Lapping tides of sympathy radiated from its diamond halo. He tilted his head to face it, and twitched his hand to try to scratch beneath the chin, but such an act was beyond him.

It thanked him. And in a muddled, emotional swell, it begged his forgiveness. He had battled so bravely on its behalf, struggled so mightily, given so much. Triumphed at the most crucial moment… And there was no reward. Even as the new god writhed in its death throes, the cycle continued. Immutable, as it was always meant to be. There was no cure to offer him. No panacea to deny the cycle's end.

Before The Drifter's eyes closed, it asked him, almost timidly. Why? Why had he fought for it? For false hope? For the potential of a favor? A new life?

The Drifter smiled and cleared his throat of blood. "I did not fight for you… I fought for them."

* * *

 ** _Author's note: Well there you have it. I'm not sure if I hit the mark with this one or not, but it was enjoyable to write. I'd love to hear your feedback about it: what you liked, what you hated. Everything is appreciated. That is, uh... assuming anybody actually read this... I mean, it couldn't have been easy to find, given the topic... But anyways, thanks for reading :D I'll probably be posting something on an even more obscure topic in the near future. Stay tuned!_**


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